  WANT OF A PURSUIT.Such is the complicated constitution of human nature, that a man without a predominant inclination is not likely to be either useful or happy. He who is every thing is nothing, is as true of our sensitive as of our intellectual nature. He is rather a bundle of little likings, than a compact and energetic individual. A strong desire soon subdues the weaker, and rules us with the united force of all that it subjugates. Such being the force of human feelings, it must embitter our daily lives if our employments are unsuited to our talents and our wishes; yet how few, alas, are so fortunate as to be gaining either wealth or fame while gratifying an inclination! In the best of all arts, the art of living, the greatest skill is not to wait; but, as you run along, snatch at every fruit and every flower growing within your reach; for, after all that can be said, youth, the age of hope and admiration, and manhood, the age of business and of influence, are to be preferred to the period of extinguished passions and languid curiosity. At that season, our hopes and wishes must have been too long dropping, leaf by leaf, away. The last scenes of the fifth act are seldom the most interesting, either in a tragedy or a comedy. Yet many compensations arise as our sensibility decays: Time steals away the rose, ’tis true; But then the thorn is blunted too. Life, without some necessity for exertion (says Mr. Walker 88. Richard Sharp. 89. In The Original, a series of Periodical Papers, published in 1835, by Thomas Walker, M.A., one of the Police Magistrates of the Metropolis. THE ENGLISH CHARACTER.Four and thirty years since, Sir Humphry Davy wrote:“The English as a nation are preËminently active, and the natives of no other country follow their objects with so much force, fire, and constancy. And as human powers are limited, there are few examples of very distinguished men living in this country to old age: they usually fail, droop, and die, before they have attained the period naturally marked out for the end of human existence. The lives of our statesmen, warriors, poets, and even philosophers, offer abundant proofs of the truth of this opinion: whatever burns, consumes; ashes remain. Before the period of youth is passed, gray hairs usually cover those brows which are adorned with the civic oak or the laurel; and in the luxurious and exciting life of the men of pleasure, their tints are not even preserved by the myrtle wreath or the garland of roses from the premature winter of time.” If these characteristics were applicable to English life a third of a century since, how much has their fitness been strengthened by the rapidity of action, the excitement, and want of repose adding to the wear and tear of existence, since that period. That the Englishman is one of the most noble species of the genus to which he belongs, seems to be generally conceded. The poet Southey expressed the opinion of more thinkers than himself when he said that the Englishman is the model or pattern man, at least of all the species at present Our genius has a most real, concrete, and altogether terrestrial tendency: there seems to be a considerable majority of Sadducees among us, or, as Plato calls them, “uninitiated persons, who believe in nothing but what they can lay hold of with their hands. These men will make railways, telegraphs, and tunnels, and build crystal palaces, and collect mechanical products from the ends of the earth, and exhibit in every possible shape and variety the sublime of what is mechanical and material; but for the supersensual ideas, they will have none of them.” Nevertheless, if we look through the history of the world’s genius, we shall find its greatest successes to lie in the practical. Homer begged; Tasso begged in a different way; Galileo was racked; De Witt assassinated,—and all for wishing to improve their species. At the same time, Raffaelle, Michel Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian, Shakspeare, were rich and happy. Why? because with their genius they combined practical prudence. This is the grand secret of success. 90. Professor Blackie; Edinburgh Essays, 1856. WORTH OF ENERGY.A man with knowledge but without energy is a home furnished but not inhabited; a man with energy but no knowledge, a house dwelt in but unfurnished. Mr. Sharp “Those who advise others to withstand the temptations of hope will always appear to be wiser than they really are, for how often can it be made certain that the rejected and untried hazard would have been successful? Besides, those who dissuade us from action have corrupt but powerful allies in our indolence, irresolution, and cowardice. To despond is very easy, but it requires works as well as faith to engage successfully in a difficult undertaking. “There are, however, few difficulties that hold out against real attacks: they fly, like the visible horizon, before those who advance. A passionate desire and an unwearied will can perform impossibilities, or what seem to be so to the cold and the feeble. If we do but go on, some unseen path will open among the hills. “We must not allow ourselves to be discouraged by the apparent disproportion between the result of single efforts and the magnitude of the obstacles to be encountered. Nothing great or good is to be obtained without courage and industry; but courage and industry must have sunk in despair, and the world must have remained unornamented and unimproved, if men had nicely compared the effect of a single stroke of the chisel with the pyramid to be raised, or of a single impression of the spade with the mountain to be levelled. “Efforts, it must not be forgotten, are as indispensable as desires. The globe is not to be circumnavigated by one wind. ‘It is better to wear out than to rust,’ says Bishop Cumberland. ‘There will be time enough for repose in the grave,’ said Nicole to Pascal. In truth, the proper rest for man is change of occupation. “The toils as well as risks of an active life are commonly overrated, so much may be done by the diligent use of ordinary opportunities; but they must not always be waited for. We must not only strike the iron while it is hot, but “The lazy, the dissipated, and the fearful, should patiently see the active and the bold pass them in the course. They must bring down their pretensions to the level of their talents. Those who have not energy to work must learn to be humble, and should not vainly hope to unite the incompatible enjoyments of indolence and enterprise, of ambition and self-indulgence.” These lines of fair encouragement are the advice of a man of the world, but whose feelings had not become blunted by his intercourse with the world: he was one of the most cheerful, amiable, and happy beings it ever fell to our lot to know; his joyous manner was the true index to his large and sound heart. 91. Mr. Richard Sharp, F.R.S., and some time M.P. for Port-Arlington, in Ireland. He was celebrated for his conversational talents, and hence was known as “Conversation Sharp.” At Fridley-farm, Sir James Macintosh, and other distinguished men of his day, were frequently Mr. Sharp’s guests. Of his volume of Letters, Essays, and Poems, a third edition appeared in 1834. TEST OF GREATNESS.The true test of a great man (says Lord Brougham),—that at least which must secure his place among the highest order of great men,—is his having been in advance of his age. This it is which decides whether or not he has carried forward the grand plan of human improvement; has conformed his views and adapted his conduct to the existing circumstances of society, or changed those so as to better its condition; has been one of the lights of the world, or only reflected the borrowed rays of former luminaries, and sat in the same shade with the rest of his generation at the same twilight or the same dawn. Nature seldom invests great men with any outward signs, from which their greatness may be known or foretold; and yet (says Lord Dudley) I own I share fully in that curiosity of the vulgar, which induces them to follow after and to gaze eagerly upon the mere bodily presence of persons that have raised themselves high above the common level. Almost all great men who have performed, or who are destined to perform, great things, are sparing of words. Their communing is with themselves rather than with others. They feed upon their own thoughts, and in these inward musings brace those intellectual and active energies, Boyle has this pertinent reflection: “There is such a kind of difference between vertue shaded by a private, and shining forth in a publick life, as there is betwixt a candle carri’d aloft in the open air, and inclosed in a lanthorn; in the former place it gives more light, but in the latter ’tis in less danger to be blown out.” The real test of greatness is courage and respect for truth, generally the earliest precept of childhood, yet of comparatively rare observance through life. “Without courage,” says Sir Walter Scott, “there cannot be truth; and without truth there can be no other virtue.” And how nobly did Scott illustrate this in his own life-practice! Truth was the redeeming virtue of one of the favoured men of our political history. The qualities which raised Fox high as a party leader were not merely his eloquence, his wit, his genius, but also his engaging warmth of heart and kindliness of temper. To these a strong testimony may be found in the memoirs of a great historian by no means blind to his faults, and by no means attached to his principles. On summing up his character, many years afterwards, Gibbon writes of Fox as follows: “Perhaps no human being was ever more perfectly exempt from the taint of malevolence, vanity, or falsehood.” 92. Occasional Reflections. CHOICE OF A PROFESSION.Keep not standing fix’d and rooted, Briskly venture, briskly roam! Hand and heart, where’er thou foot it, And stout heart are still at home. In each land the sun does visit We are gay, whate’er betide; To give space for wand’ring is it That the world was made so wide. Wilhelm Meister: Carlyle. We know of no more fertile source of crime than Idleness. It is the want of a due impression of the importance and legitimate employment of time, which is one of the main occasions of the luxury and profligacy of one order of Mr. Ruskin has written these beautiful words of encouragement: “God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission; and if they discharge it honourably—if they quit themselves like men, and faithfully follow that light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching influence—there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service, constant and holy. Degrees infinite of lustre there must always be; but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which, worthily used, will be a gift also to his race for ever.” ‘Know thyself’ is an old precept; yet it is surprising how few are sufficiently acquainted with themselves to see distinctly what their own motives actually are. It is a rare thing, as well as a great advantage, for a man to know his own mind. Were but a tithe of the time and the thought usually spent in learning the commonest accomplishments bestowed upon regulating our lives, how many evils would be avoided or lessened; how many pleasures would be created or increased! In one of Steele’s papers, No. 173 of the Tatler, are some admirable remarks upon the time lost by boys in learning that which, in after-life, is of little service to them. “The truth of it is,” says Steele, “the first rudiments of education are given very indiscreetly by most parents. Whatever children are designed for, and whatever prospects the fortune or interest of their parents may give them in their future lives, they are all promiscuously instructed in the same way; The practice of the irresolute in deliberating without deciding is another parlous error. “What I cannot resolve upon in half an hour,” said the Duc de Guise, “I cannot resolve upon at all.” Bacon has well described this irresolution in his complaint, “that some men object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home.” The strongest incentive to decision is self-dependence. Mr. Sharp writes to a young friend at college: I have confidence in your capacity. However, my favourable Vitam facit beatiorem Res non parta, sed relicta, says Martial, but not wisely; and no young man should believe him. The necessity for instant decision in life renders it often prudent to take the chance of being right or wrong, without waiting to balance reasons very nicely. In such cases, and sometimes even in speculation, this kind of credulity is more philosophical than scepticism; though authority in abstruse investigations should usually do little more than excite attention, while in practice it must guide our conduct. It is unfortunate when a man’s intellectual and his moral character are not suited to each other. The horses in a carriage should go the same pace and draw in the same direction, or the motion will be neither pleasant nor safe. Bonaparte has remarked of one of his marshals, that “he had a military genius, but had not intrepidity enough in the field to execute his own plans;” and of another he said, “he is as brave as his sword, but he wants judgment and resources: neither,” he added, “is to be trusted with a great command.” This want of harmony between the talents and the temperament is often found in private life; and, wherever found, is the fruitful source of faults and sufferings. Perhaps there are few less happy than those who are ambitious without industry; who pant for the prize, but will not run the race; who thirst for truth, but are too slothful to draw it up from the well. Now this defect, whether arising from indolence or from timidity, is far from being incurable. It may, at least in part, be remedied by frequently reflecting on the endless encouragements to exertion held out by our own experience and by example: C’est des difficultÉs que naissent les miracles. It is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity especially is often a blessing. Perhaps Madame de Maintenon would never have mounted a throne had not her cradle been rocked in a prison. Surmounted obstacles not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles; for virtue must be learnt, though unfortunately some of the vices come, as it were, by inspiration. The austerities of our northern climate are thought to be the cause of our abundant comforts; as our wintry nights and our stormy seas have given us a race of seamen perhaps unequalled, and certainly not surpassed, by any in the world. “Mother,” said a Spartan lad going to battle, “my sword is too short.” “Add a step to it,” she replied; but it must be owned that this advice was to be given only to a Spartan boy. They should not be thrown into the water who cannot swim: I know your buoyancy, and I have no fears of your being drowned. OFFICIAL LIFE.The grand scramble for place was thus vividly painted by Mr. Sharp some eighty years since: “The young people of this country, in every rank, from a peer’s son to a street-sweeper’s, are drawn aside from a praiseworthy exertion in honest callings, by having their eyes directed towards the public treasury. The rewards of persevering industry are too slow for them, too small, and too insipid. They fondly trust to the great lottery, although the wheel contains so many blanks and so few prizes; hoping that their ticket may be drawn a place, a pension, or a contract; a living, or a stall; a ship, or a regiment; a seat on the bench, or the great seal. “It is, indeed, most humiliating to witness the indecent scramble that is always going on for these prizes, the highest born and best educated rolling in the dirt to pick them up, just as the lowest of the mob do for the shillings or the pence thrown among them by a successful candidate at a contested election.” In this rush there must always be a host of genius and talent neglected or overlooked; and this from various causes, some of which have been thus sketched by a living novelist, accustomed to see far beyond most of his literary brethren: In all men who have devoted themselves to any study, or any art, with sufficient pains to attain a certain degree of excellence, there must be a fund of energy immeasurably above that of the ordinary herd. Usually, this energy is concentred on the objects of their professional ambition, and leaves them, therefore, apathetic to the other pursuits of men. But where those objects are denied, where the stream has not its legitimate vent, the energy, irritated and aroused, possesses the whole being; and if not wasted on desultory schemes, or if not purified by conscience and principle, becomes a dangerous and destructive element in the social system, through which it wanders in riot and disorder. Hence, in all wise monarchies—nay, in all well-constituted states—the peculiar care with which channels are opened for every art and every science; hence the honour paid to their cultivators by subtle and thoughtful statesmen, who, perhaps, for themselves, see nothing in a picture but coloured canvas—nothing in a problem but an ingenious puzzle. No state is ever more in danger than when the talent which should be consecrated to peace has no occupation but political intrigue or personal advancement. Talent unhonoured is talent at war with men. Reliance upon family influence with persons in high “My dear John,—I return you Moore’s letter. I shall be ready to do what you like about it when we have the means. I think whatever is done should be done for Moore himself. This is more distinct, direct, and intelligible. Making a small provision for young men is hardly justifiable; and it is of all things the most prejudicial to themselves. They think what they have much larger than it really is; and they make no exertion. The young should never hear any language but this: ‘You have your own way to make, and it depends upon your own exertions whether you starve or not.’—Believe me, &c.Melbourne.” The foundation of the Sidmouth Peerage is traceable to one of those fortunate turns which have much to do with worldly success. It is related that while Lord Chatham was residing at Hayes, in Kent, his first coachman being taken ill, the postillion was sent for the family doctor; but not finding him, the messenger returned, bringing with him Mr. Addington, then a practitioner in the place, who, by permission of Lord Chatham, saw the coachman, and reported his ailment. His lordship was so pleased with Mr. Addington, that he employed him as apothecary for the servants, and then for himself; and, Lady Hester Stanhope tells us, “finding he spoke good sense on medicine, and then on politics, he at last made him his physician.” Dr. Addington subsequently practised in the metropolis, then retired to Reading, and there married; and in 1757 was born his eldest son, Henry Addington, who was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and called to the Bar in 1784. The origin of Lord Liverpool is scarcely less striking. The father of this statesman was Mr. Robert Jenkinson, a man of no patrimony, but who, by his application and aptitude for State affairs, gave lustre to his name. In 1778 he succeeded Lord Barrington as Secretary-at-War: he rose at last to be Earl of Liverpool; and his son, the second Earl, to be fifteen years First Lord of the Treasury. Another instance of successful integrity in Official Life is presented by the Right Hon. George Rose, one of the most valuable public servants which this country has known,—“an able, clear-headed, straightforward man of business, whose steady industry, devoted for years to the service of the State, won for him, and most deservedly, not only political importance, but the personal regard of his sovereign, and indeed of all who knew him.” John Barrow, born in a lowly cottage at Dragley Beck, in Lancashire, rose, by his own earnest industry, to the responsible post of a Secretary to the Admiralty, for forty years, under thirteen administrations. When sixteen years old, he made a voyage in a whaler to Greenland; he next taught mathematics in a school at Greenwich. He attended Lord Macartney in his celebrated embassy to China, and took charge of the philosophical instruments carried out as presents to the Emperor of China; of this journey Barrow subsequently published an account in a quarto volume. He was next appointed Secretary to Lord Macartney, Governor of the Cape of Good Hope; and during his leisure Mr. Barrow, in various journeys, collected materials for a volume of Travels in South Africa, which he published on his return to England. Throughout his Admiralty secretaryship he was indefatigable in promoting the progress of geographical or scientific knowledge, especially in recommending to the governments under which he served various voyages to the Arctic Regions. He was a man of untiring industry, and devoted his leisure to literature and scientific pursuits: he published various works; contributed 195 articles to the Quarterly Review; and at the age of eighty-three (one year before his death) wrote his Autobiography. His public services had been rewarded by a baronetcy in 1835; and shortly after his death, in 1848, upon the lofty Hill of Hoad, near to the humble cottage in which Sir John Barrow was born, there was erected, by public subscription, to his memory, a sea-mark tower, as a record of what noble distinction may be earned in this happy country by well-directed energy and strictly moral worth. 93. Sir E. L. Bulwer Lytton’s Zanoni. 94. Family reputation is generally considered but an insecure stock to begin the world with: nevertheless there is much truth in the experience of Lord Mahon (now Earl Stanhope), who says: “In public life I have seen full as many men promoted for their father’s talents as for their own.” 95. This letter is quoted in Mr. Smiles’s Self-Help. 96. Notes and Queries. OFFICIAL QUALIFICATIONS.Swift’s happy illustration of a frequent cause of failure, drawn in the reign of Queen Anne,—whose administrators were principally eminent scholars,—is scarcely so applicable in our time. Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt A model Court-letter has been preserved by singular accident. When Swift was looking out for the prebend and sinecure of Dr. South, who was then very infirm, he received the following letter from Lord Halifax, to whom Addison had communicated Swift’s expectations: “October 6, 1709. “Sir,—Our friend Mr. Addison telling me that he was to write to you to-night, I could not let his packet go away without letting you know how much I am concerned to find them returned without you. I am quite ashamed, for myself and my friends, to see you left in a place so incapable of testing you; and to see so much merit, and so great qualities, unrewarded by those who are sensible of them. Mr. Addison and I are entered into a new confederacy, never to give over the pursuit, nor to cease reminding those who can serve you, till your worth is placed in that light it ought to shine in. Dr. South holds out still, but he cannot be immortal. The situation of his prebend would make me doubly concerned in serving you; and upon all occasions that shall offer, I will be your constant solicitor, your sincere admirer, and your unalterable friend.—I am your most humble and obedient servant, Halifax.” Sir W. Scott notes: “This letter from Lord Halifax, the celebrated and almost professed patron of learning, is a curiosity in its way, being a perfect model of a courtier’s correspondence with a man of letters—condescending, obliging, and probably utterly unmeaning. Dr. Swift wrote thus on the back of the letter: ‘I kept this letter as a true original of courtiers and court promises;’ and, on the first leaf of a small printed book, entitled PoÉsies ChrÉtiennes de Mons. Jollivet, he wrote these words: ‘Given me by my Lord Halifax, May 3, 1709. I begged it of him, and desired him to remember it was the only favour I ever received from him or his party.’” Dr. South, it should be added, survived until 1716, and then died, aged 83. Diplomatic Handwriting has been a point of some moment with ministers, but has been tested in some strange varieties. Lord Palmerston, who was so long Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, was very particular as to hand-writing, PUBLIC SPEAKING.The art of speaking well is unquestionably one of the showiest qualifications for public life; although the drawback of unsoundness may be as common now as when it was classically expressed: Satis eloquentiÆ, sapientiÆ parum. Little or no attention has been bestowed in modern times on oratory as a separate branch of study; and eloquence has come to be more admired as one of the rare gifts of nature, than sought after as one of the fruits of art. The diffusion of opinions and arguments by means of the press has perhaps contributed in some degree to the present neglect of oratory; for a speaker is mainly known to the public through the press, and it is often more important to him to be read than to be heard: the eloquence of the newspaper—that is, the accomplishment of reporting—is the best oratory of our times; but the following experiences may be useful. First, of one of the greatest orators of antiquity—Demosthenes. Those who expect to find in his style of oratory the fervid and impassioned language of a man carried away Demosthenes laboured under great physical disadvantages: he was naturally of a weak constitution, had a feeble voice, an indistinct articulation, and a shortness of breath. To remedy these defects, he climbed up hills with pebbles in his mouth, he declaimed on the sea-shore, or with a sword hung so as to strike his shoulders when he made an uncouth gesture. He is also said to have shut himself up at times in a cave underground for study’s sake, and this for months together. Next, of a great master of eloquence in our own times—Charles James Fox, whom Lord Ossory describes as “one of the most extraordinary men that ever existed.” He was very young when his father, Henry, Lord Holland, finished his political career; but hearing from his childhood a constant conversation upon political subjects and the occurrences in the House of Commons, he was, both by nature and education, formed for a statesman. “His father delighted to cultivate his talents by argumentation and reasoning with him upon all subjects. He took his seat in the House of Commons before he was twenty-one, and very shortly began to show the dawn of those prodigious talents which he has since displayed. He was much caressed by the then Ministry, and appointed a Lord of the Admiralty, and soon promoted to the Treasury. Lord North (which he must ever since have repented) was inclined to turn him out upon some trivial occasion or difference; and soon afterwards the fatal quarrel with America commenced, Mr. Fox constantly opposing the absurd measures of administration, and rising Scarcely any person has ever become a great debater without long practice and many failures. It was by slow degrees, as Burke said, that Fox became the most brilliant and powerful debater that ever lived. Fox himself attributed his own success to the resolution which he formed when very young, of speaking, well or ill, at least once every night. “During five whole sessions,” he used to say, “I spoke every night but one; and I regret only that I did not speak that night too.” The model of a debate is that given by Milton in the opening of the second book of Paradise Lost. Mr. Sharp tells of the first meetings of a society at a public school, in which two or three evenings were consumed in debating whether the floor should be covered with a sail-cloth or a carpet; and better practice was gained in these unimportant discussions than in those that soon followed,—on liberty, slavery, passive obedience, and tyrannicide. It has been truly said, that nothing is so unlike a battle as a review. The late Marquis of Lansdowne one day remarked to Thomas Moore, that he hardly ever spoke in the House of Lords without feeling the approaches of some loss of self-possession, and found that the only way to surmount it was to talk on at all hazards. He added, what appears highly probable, that those commonplaces which most men accustomed to public speaking have ready cut and dry, to bring in on all occasions, were, he thought, in general used by them as a mode of getting out of those blank intervals, when they do not know what to say next, but, in the mean time, must say something. Mr. John Scott Russell, the eminent engineer, gives the following practical hints: “In a large room, nearly square, the best place to speak from is near one corner, with the voice directed diagonally to the opposite corner. In all rooms of common forms, the lowest pitch of voice that will reach across the room will be most audible. In all such rooms, it is better to speak along the length of the room than across it; and a low ceiling will, cÆteris paribus, convey the sound better than a high one. It is better, generally, To be well acquainted with the subject is of prime importance. Malone relates an amusing instance of failure in this respect in one of our greatest orators. Lord Chatham, when Mr. Pitt, on some occasion made a very long and able speech in the Privy Council relative to some naval matter. Every one present was struck by the force of his eloquence. Lord Anson, who was by no means eloquent, being then at the head of the Admiralty, and differing entirely in opinion from Mr. Pitt, got up, and only said these words: “My Lords, Mr. Secretary is very eloquent, and has stated his own opinion very plausibly. I am no orator; and all I shall say is, that he knows nothing at all of what he has been talking about.” Mr. Flood, the Irish orator, being told that he seemed to argue with somewhat less of his usual vigour when engaged on the wrong side of the question, happily replied that he “could not escape from the force of his own understanding.” This must be the origin of the shrewd observation, that some clever persons are “educated beyond their own understanding.” Mr. Brougham, writing to the father of Thomas Babington Macaulay when the latter was at Cambridge University, urged the following, with a view to the great promise for public speaking which Macaulay then possessed, and of which Lord Grey had spoken in terms of the highest praise. “He takes his accounts from his son,” says Mr. Brougham; “but from all I know, and have learnt in other quarters, I doubt not that his judgment is well formed. Now, of course, you destine him for the Bar; and, assuming that this, and the public objects incidental to it, are in his views, I would fain impress upon you (and through you, upon him) a truth or two which experience has made me aware of, and which I would have given a great deal to have been acquainted with earlier in life from the experience of others. “1. The beginning of the art is to acquire a habit of easy speaking; and in whatever way this can be had (which individual inclination or accident will generally direct, and may “2. The next step is the grand one: to convert this style of easy speaking into chaste eloquence. And here there is but one rule. I do earnestly entreat your son to set daily and nightly before him the Greek models. First of all, he may look to the best modern speeches (as probably he has already); but he must by no means stop here; if he would be a great orator, he must go at once to the fountain-head, and be familiar with every one of the great orations of Demosthenes. I take for granted that he knows those of Cicero by heart; they are very beautiful, but not very useful, except, perhaps, the Milo, pro Ligario, and one or two more: but the Greek must positively be the model; and merely reading it, as boys do, won’t do at all; he must enter into the spirit of each speech, thoroughly know the positions of the parties, follow each turn of the argument, and make the absolutely perfect and most chaste and severe composition familiar in his mind. His taste will improve every time he reads and repeats to himself (for he should have the fine passages by heart); and he will learn how much may be done by the skilful use of a few words, and a vigorous rejection of all superfluities. A contemporary journalist Akin to the present subject is the art of presiding over a festive company, for which Sir Walter Scott has left these few simple practical rules: 1st. Always hurry the bottle round for five or six rounds, without prosing yourself, or permitting others to prose. A slight fillip of wine inclines people to be pleased, and removes the nervousness which prevents men from speaking—disposes them, in short, to be amusing, and to be amused. 2d. Push on, keep moving! as young Rapid says. Do not think of saying fine things—nobody cares for them any more than for fine music, which is often too liberally bestowed on such occasions. Speak at all ventures, and attempt the mot pour rire. You will find people satisfied with wonderfully indifferent jokes, if you can but hit the taste of the company, which depends much on its character. Even a very high party, primed with all the cold irony and non est tanti feelings, or no feelings of fashionable folks, may be stormed by a jovial, rough, round, and ready prÆses. Choose your text with discretion—the sermon may be as you like. Should a drunkard or an ass break in with any thing out of joint, if you can parry it with a jest, good and well; if not, do not exert your serious authority, unless it is something very bad. The authority even of a chairman ought to be very cautiously exercised. With patience, you will have the support of every one. 3d. When you have drunk a few glasses to play the good fellow and banish modesty (if you are unlucky enough to have such a troublesome companion), then beware of the cup too much. Nothing is so ridiculous as a drunken preses. Lastly, always speak short, and Skeoch doch na skiel—cut a tale with a drink. 97. Orat. c. 7.] 98. The Times. OPPORTUNITY.To bide the time is often the means, though slow, of reaping success. Late in the last century, a printseller settled in a leading street of the artistic locality of Soho: during the first six weeks he kept shop, his receipts were not as many pence; nevertheless he was civil and obliging to all callers and inquirers, to whom, in the printselling business, customers are a very small proportion. This obliging disposition was his main investment, and his shop grew to be the resort of print-collectors of all grades—from the rich duke to the hard-working engraver; he became wealthy, and died bequeathing to his family a considerable fortune, and the finest stock of prints in the metropolis. Extraordinary instances have occurred of latent genius having been discovered by some lucky accident, and fostered to high position. Isaac Ware, the architect and editor of Palladio, was originally a chimney-sweeper, and, when a boy, was seated one day in front of Whitehall-palace, upon the pavement, whereon he had drawn in chalk the elevation of a building. This attracted the notice of a gentleman in passing, and led him to inquire who had chalked out the building. The boy replied, it was his own work; the unknown patron then took the lad to the master-sweeper to whom he was apprenticed, purchased his indenture, and forthwith had little Ware educated: he rose to be one of the leading architects of his day, and among other edifices he built Chesterfield-house, in South Audley-street, one of the handsomest mansions in the metropolis. Ware died in 1766; and, it is said, retained the stain of soot in his face to the day of his death. MEN OF BUSINESS.Our forefathers appear to have conveyed much of their instructions in Business Life by way of apophthegm. In the Spectator, No. 109, it is observed that “the man proper for the business of money and the advancement of gain, speaking in the general, is of a sedate, plain, good understanding, not apt to go out of his way, but so behaving himself However, Bacon thought otherwise. “Let no man,” he says, “fear lest learning should expulse business; nay, rather, it will keep and defend the possessions of the mind against idleness and pleasure, which otherwise, at unawares, may enter to the prejudice both of business and pleasure.” The proper time—“rerum est omnium primum.” “To choose time,” says Bacon, “is to save time; and an unseasonable motion is but beating the air. There be three parts of business: the preparation; the debate, or examination; and the perfection; whereof, if you look for despatch, let the middle only be the work of many, and the first and last the work of few.” Sir Robert Walpole had in his mind a man not apt to go out of his way, when he described Henry Legge, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, as having “very little rubbish in his head;” meaning that he was a practical, useful man of business. There are few persons who have not met with cases of hypochondriacs who have been relieved and made more happy by useful and disinterested occupation in promoting the welfare of others. Dr. Heberden used to relate a striking case of this kind. Captain Blake was a hypochondriac for several years, and during that time every week or two he consulted the Doctor, who had not only prescribed all the medicines likely to correct disease arising from bodily infirmity, but every argument which humanity and good sense could suggest for the comfort of his mind; but in vain. At length Dr. Heberden heard no more of his patient, Innumerable are the instances of men retiring from business in middle life, yet yearning to return to it,—so strong is the habit of occupation. We all remember the story of the city tallow-chandler, who retired into the suburbs, having sold his business, with the proviso that he should come to town on a melting-day. One of the partners of a large publishing house, some years since, retired into Wales; but did not long survive the change, to enjoy his well-earned fortune. Another instance occurs: a tradesman retired from business with a fortune, and travelled for some time to divert ennui; but this not succeeding, he returned to active life in manufacturing and patenting lamps and kettles, night-lights and potato-saucepans, and, in such small ingenuities, finds himself happy again. The late Mr. Charles Tilt, the well-known publisher in Fleet-street, retired from business in middle life; travelled many years in each quarter of the world; and wrote a pleasant little book, entitled The Boat and the Caravan. He had been articled to Longman and Co.; then lived with Mr. Hatchard, in Piccadilly; and next established himself with great success. Notwithstanding his long retirement, his business habits never forsook him: he generously acted as trustee in the settlement of the affairs of his late partner, Mr. David Bogue, who had succeeded to the entire concern in Fleet-street; and he next officiated as executor to the estate of the late Mr. Hatchard, with whom he had formerly lived. Mr. Tilt died in 1862, leaving the large property of 180,000l. CHARACTER THE BEST SECURITY. “I owe my success in business chiefly to you,” said a stationer to a paper-maker, as they were settling a large account; “but let me ask how a man of your caution came to Worth makes the man, want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather or prunello.—Pope.” ENGINEERS AND MECHANICIANS.“No man can look back on the last twenty or thirty years without feeling that it has been the age of Engineers and Mechanicians. The profession has, in that period of time, done much to change the aspect of human affairs; for what agency during that period, single or combined, can be compared in its effects, or in its tendency towards the amelioration of the condition of mankind, with the establishment of railroads, of the electric telegraph, and to the improvement in steam navigation?” “The wide range of the profession of an Engineer requires the assistance of many departments of science and art, and must call into employment important branches of manufacture. He can perform no great work without the aid of a great variety of workmen; and it is on their strength and skill, as well as on their scientific direction, that the perfection of his work will depend. The personal experience of one individual cannot fit him for the exigencies of a profession which is ever extending its range of subjects, and is constantly dealing with new and “There is no such thing as discovery and invention, in the sense which is sometimes attached to the words. Men do not suddenly discover new worlds, or invent new machines, or find new metals. Some indeed may be, and are, better fitted than others for such purposes; but the progress of discovery is, and always has been, much the same. There is nothing really worth having that man has obtained that has not been the result of a combined and gradual progress of investigation. A gifted individual comes across some old footmark, and stumbles on a chain of previous research and inquiry. He meets, for instance, with a machine, the result of much previous labour; he modifies it, pulls it to pieces, constructs and reconstructs it, and, by further trial and experiment, he arrives at the long-sought-for result.” Such were the emphatic words of Mr. Hawkshaw, F.R.S., in opening his Address on his election as President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, session 1861-62. It would not be difficult to illustrate the President’s data by many bright instances of their truth. But we remember too well the sad story of Myddleton bringing the New River to our metropolis, a very early engineering labour, who, although he died not so poor as is usually represented, yet his family fell into decay. Almost equally familiar is the story of the life of George Stephenson, the maturer of the locomotive engine; and the career of his son, Robert Stephenson, the constructor of the London and Birmingham Railway, and second only to his father as a railway engineer. George learned to read and write at night-schools, and “figuring” by the engine-fires. As Robert grew up, his father was enabled to send him to Edinburgh University, where he acquired some knowledge in mathematics and geology: these acquisitions afforded subjects for comment and discussion between him and his father, and were of valuable use to both in their future joint avocations; and when the father had retired, in the sphere of railways Robert was recognised as the foremost man, the safest guide, and the most active worker. In the great railway mania of 1844, he was engineer for thirty-three new schemes; and his income “He almost worshiped his father’s memory, and said he owed all to his father’s training, his example, and his character; and he declared in public: ‘It is my great pride to remember that, whatever may have been done, and however extensive may have been my own connexion in the railway development, all I owe, and all I have done is primarily due, to the parent whose memory I cherish and revere.’ Like his father, he was eminently practical, and yet always open to the influence and guidance of correct theory. “In society Robert Stephenson was simple, unobtrusive, and modest; but charming, and even fascinating, in an eminent degree. Sir John Lawrence has said of him, that he was, of all others, the man he most delighted to meet in England, he was so manly, yet gentle, and withal so great. “His great wealth enabled him to perform many generous acts in a right noble and yet modest manner, not letting his right hand know what his left hand did.” In the life of Thomas Telford, we have another striking instance of a man who, by the force of natural talent, unaided save by uprightness and persevering industry, raised himself from low estate to take his stand among the master-spirits of the age. He was born in 1757, in Dumfriesshire, sent to the parish-school, and employed as a shepherd-boy; in his leisure, delighted to read the books lent him by his village friends. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a stone-mason, and for several years worked on bridges and stone-buildings, village-churches, and manses, in his native district. In 1780 he went to Edinburgh, and for two years closely attended to architecture and drawing. He then removed to London, and worked upon the quadrangle of Somerset House, under Sir William Chambers, as architect. His next practice was in the construction of graving-docks, wharf-walls, and similar engineering works; and he built above forty bridges in Shropshire. His greatest works are, the Ellesmere Canal, 103 miles in length, with its wonderful aqueduct-bridges; the Caledonian Canal, which cost a million of money; the Bedford Level, and other John Rennie, who designed three of the noblest bridges in the world, in addition to other great engineering works, was born in 1761, in the county of East Lothian. He learned his first lessons in mechanics in the workshop of a millwright; before he was eleven years old he had constructed a windmill, a pile-engine, and a steam-engine; he next learned elementary mathematics and mechanics, and drawing machinery and architecture, and attended lectures on mechanical philosophy and chemistry. His greatest works are the Plymouth Breakwater; Waterloo, Southwark, and London bridges; the London, East and West India Docks; and great steam-engines; his principal undertakings having cost forty millions sterling. He was rarely occupied in business less than twelve hours a day; he seldom illustrated his information with any other instrument than a two-foot rule, which he always carried in his pocket. He owed his good fortune to talent, industry, prudence, perseverance, boldness of conception, soundness of judgment, and habits of untiring application: his works were indeed executed for posterity. Sir Edward Banks, who built Rennie’s three stupendous bridges, was a labourer at Chipstead on the Merstham railway, some sixty years since: by his own natural abilities, which had not been cultivated to any extent, and by his The history of the life of the elder Brunel is strangely tinged with romance. He was born in Normandy in 1769, was early intended for the priesthood; but when at the college of Gisors, he would steal away to the village carpenter’s shop, and draw faces and plans, and learn to handle tools; and one day, seeing a new tool in a cutler’s window, he pawned his hat to purchase it. He was next sent to the ecclesiastical seminary of St. Nicaise at Rouen; there, in his play-hours, he loved to watch the ships along the quay; and seeing some large iron castings landed from an English ship, he inquired, Where had they come from? and on being told from England, the boy exclaimed, “Ah, when I am a man, I will go and see the country where such grand machines are made.” On his return home, he continued his mechanical recreations; made musical instruments; and invented a nightcap-making machine, which is still used by the peasantry in that part of Normandy. His father now gave up all hope of his son for the priesthood, and had him qualified to enter the navy, and at seventeen he was nominated to a royal corvette; but while serving there he continued his mechanical pursuits, and made for himself a quadrant in ebony. His ship having been paid off in 1792, Brunel went to Paris, where he nearly fell a victim to the fury of the Revolution; but he escaped to Rouen, and thence fled to the United States, where he landed in 1793. While at New York, the idea of his block-machinery occurred to him. He now executed canal surveys, and designed the Park Theatre, and superintended its erection; he was next appointed chief engineer for New York, and there erected a cannon-foundry, with novel contrivances for casting and boring guns. He left New York in January 1799, and landed at Falmouth in the following March: there he met his early love, Sophia Kingdom, and the pair were shortly after united for life. The younger Brunel’s first great work was the Clifton Suspension Bridge, followed by docks at Bristol and Sunderland, and several colliery tramways. In 1835, he was appointed engineer of the Great Western Railway, being then only about twenty-eight years of age, but skilful and ingenious, and anxious to strike out an entirely new course in railway engineering. He adopted the broad-gauge, then a great and novel enterprise, but now ascertained to be unnecessary: the works were unusually costly, and so novel that the line was called the Grand Experimental Railway; Next, Brunel devised an iron-plated armed ship capable of withstanding the fire of the Sebastopol forts; but his grand triumphs as a naval engineer were, the Great Western, steam-ship, propelled by paddle-wheels; and the Great Britain, propelled by a screw; but these were thrown into the shade by his Great Eastern, combining the powers of the paddle-wheel and the screw; and which, with the aid of Mr. Scott Russell, its builder, was completed and launched,—the largest ship that has ever floated. But this stupendous labour had undermined Mr. Brunel’s health; he was seized with paralysis, and died at the comparatively early age of fifty-three. Of Brunel’s great engineering skill there can be no question; he loved difficulties and engineering perils: he has been styled “the Michael Angelo of Railways;” and his victory in “the Battle of the Gauges” gained him extraordinary The career of Joseph Locke, civil engineer, though less brilliant than that of Brunel, was one of more sterling worth. He was born in Yorkshire, in 1805, the son of a fellow-workman with George Stephenson at the pit. Locke had little schooling, and failing in two or three humble services, at the age of nineteen he became George Stephenson’s pupil, and then his assistant, taking charge of the survey of railway lines; he was appointed engineer-in-chief of the Grand Junction and South-Western lines; and next initiated the Continental Railway system, promoting the rapid communication between London and Paris. He was made a chevalier and officer of the Legion of Honour, and sat in the British Parliament for Honiton. He died at the early age of fifty-five, leaving great wealth to his widow (a daughter of Mr. M‘Creery, the literary printer), to form in the North a public park, and found a scholarship. The high celebrity of Mr. Locke was not due to the fact of his making railways. It was, that he made them within the estimated cost,—an achievement which would sooner or later have been attained by the ordinary operations of capital. The Grand Junction Railway was eventually constructed for a sum within the estimate, and at an average cost of less than 15,000l. a mile. The heavy works on the Caledonian line were completed at less than 16,000l. a mile. This economical success was in a great measure owing to the adoption of a bold system of steep gradients—an expedient which Stephenson, it appears, disliked to the last, and which was a prevailing feature in his active rival’s designs. Locke hated a tunnel, and with embankments and inclines would encounter any difficulty. Thomas Cubitt, the great metropolitan builder and contractor, was another remarkable man of this class. He was born at Buxton, near Norwich, in 1788. At the time of his father’s death he was nineteen years old, and working as a journeyman carpenter. He next took a voyage to India Thomas Brassey, the railway contractor, is another remarkable instance of colossal labour. Born at Buerton in 1805, and educated at Chester, he commenced life as a surveyor at Birkenhead; and his first railway work was a contract to supply the stone for a viaduct of the Liverpool and Manchester line. From this period to the present hour, he has constructed, upon his own responsibility and credit, many hundred miles of railway in England, Scotland, France, Spain, and Canada, at the cost of millions of money. A striking instance of his energy and enterprise occurred in one of his French contracts. When the Barentine viaduct, of twenty arches, on the Rouen and Havre Railway, was nearly completed, the work gave way, and the casualty involved a loss of 30,000l. Mr. Brassey was neither morally nor legally responsible—he had repeatedly protested against the material used in the structure; but the viaduct was rebuilt entirely at Mr. Brassey’s cost. James Walker, civil engineer, who died in 1862, aged eighty-one, was the oldest member of the profession. He was one of the earliest members of the Institution of Civil Engineers, succeeded Telford as President, and filled the chair fourteen years. Mr. Walker, through his long life, was associated with many of the greatest hydraulic works in England and Scotland, including lighthouses, harbours, bridges, embankments, and drainage. He had accumulated in personalty 300,000l., which he took great pains to distribute 99. Smiles’s Lives of the Engineers, vol. iii. 100. He had more perilous escapes from violent death than fall to the lot of most men. He had two narrow escapes from drowning by the river suddenly bursting in upon the Thames-Tunnel works. During the Great Western Railway inspection, he was one day riding a pony rapidly down Boxhill, when the animal stumbled and fell, pitching the engineer on his head; he was taken up for dead, but eventually recovered. One day, when driving an engine through the Box-tunnel, he discerned some light object standing on the same line of road along which his engine was travelling; he turned on the full steam and dashed the object (a contractor’s truck) into a thousand pieces. When on board the Great Western steam-ship, he fell down a hatchway into the hold, and was nearly killed. But the most extraordinary accident which befel him was, in showing a sleight-of-hand trick to his children, his swallowing a half-sovereign, which dropped into his windpipe, remained there for six weeks, when it was removed through an incision in the windpipe, by Sir Benjamin Brodie and Mr. Key; his body was inverted, and after a few coughs, the coin dropped into his mouth. Mr. Brunel used afterwards to say, that the moment when he heard the gold piece strike against his upper front teeth was perhaps the most exquisite in his whole life.—Abridged from the Quarterly Review, No. 223. 101. Saturday Review. 102. This district was originally a clayey swamp; but Mr. Cubitt finding the strata to consist of gravel and clay of inconsiderable depth, the clay he removed and burned into bricks; and by building upon the substratum of gravel, he converted this spot from one of the most unhealthy to one of the most healthy—a singular adaptation of the means to the end. SCIENTIFIC FARMING.Southey, in The Doctor, remarks: “It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that the most intelligent farmers in the neighbourhood of London are persons who have taken to farming as a business, because of their strong inclination for rural employments: one of the very best in Middlesex, when the Survey of that county was published by the Board of Agriculture, had been a tailor.” Scientific farming has of late years largely multiplied these amateur farmers; but, long before rural economy had taken this turn, we remember a curious instance. Some five-and-forty years since, when Davy’s Agricultural Chemistry was the only work of its class, there lived in a town of Surrey a gentleman-tradesman, who loved to relieve the monotony of his own business by flying off to experimental pursuits. In politics he was a disciple of Cobbett, and year after year foretold a revolution in England,—an alarm which he raised throughout his household. He took extreme interest in new mechanical projects; and kept a chronological record of the progress of the Thames Tunnel. In wine-making he was a very experimentalist, and knew by heart every line of Macculloch on Wine from unripe fruit. Next, he turned over every inch of his garden, analysed the soil À la Davy, and salted all his growing crops, as well as the soil. But he soon flew from horticultural chemistry to real farming; and about the same time took to road-making and macadamisation, and became surveyor of the highways. He next bought the lease of a house in the neighbourhood for the sake of the large garden attached to it; and here he passed much of his time in its experimental culture. Had he lived to the days of Liebig, how he would have revelled in his theories! We have a strong confirmation of Southey’s remark in the present day in the case of Alderman Mechi, who has become a memorable man in this kind of experimental agriculture, and has transferred the magic of his Razor-Strop LARGE FORTUNES.No single class can be pointed to in the present day as the first favourite of fortune. The loan-monger is still powerful, and so is the speculator; but bankers accumulate fortunes like those of the highest nobles, and a linen-draper left the other day cash which would purchase the fee-simple of the Woburn estates. The rate of fortunes has enormously increased. Pitt thought it useless to tax fortunes above a million, and now men die every day whose heirs chuckle over the saving produced by this want of foresight. A “plum” has ceased to be even a citizen’s goal, and there are tradesmen in London whose incomes while in trade exceed “a great fortune” of the time of the second George. Very enormous realised fortunes, properties that are producing 50,000l. a-year, are, however, still very scarce. Only fifty-seven are returned to the English income-tax; and though that is a palpably erroneous account, it may be doubted if there are a dozen individuals with that amount in the world. There are none in France or Italy beyond a few working capitalists, a few remaining in Germany, a considerable number in Russia, and perhaps thirty individuals in America. There are perhaps ten private incomes in India of that amount, Many a Londoner past middle age may recollect Thomas Clark, “the King of Exeter ’Change,” who was long one of the most singular characters in the metropolis. He took a stall in the ’Change in 1765, with 100l. lent him by a stranger. By parsimony and perseverance he so extended his business as to occupy nearly one-half of the entire building with the sale of cutlery, turnery, &c. He grew rich, and once returned his income at 6000l. a-year. He was penurious in his habits: he dined with his plate on the bare board, and his meal, with a pint of porter, never cost him a shilling; after dinner he took a glass of spirits-and-water at the public-house opposite the end of the ’Change, and then returned to his business. He resided in Belgrave-place, Pimlico; and morning and evening saw him on his old horse, riding into town and home again—and thus he figured in the print-shops. He died in 1817, in his eightieth year, and left nearly half a million of money. His daughter was married to Hamlet, the celebrated goldsmith of Coventry-street who, however, met with sad reverses; and, among other unsuccessful speculations, built the Bazaar and the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford-street. The wealth of the celebrated Mr. Beckford, the son of the demagogue Alderman, and Lord Chatham’s god-child, proved the shoal upon which his happiness was wrecked. He succeeded to his father’s enormous fortune at ten years of age. He was educated at home: he was quick and lively, and had literary tastes; he had a great passion for genealogy and heraldry; studied Oriental literature: in his seventeenth year he wrote a history of extraordinary painters. His father had left him, principally in Jamaica estates, a property which, on the conclusion of his minority, furnished him with a million of ready money and an income of 100,000l. a-year. He travelled and resided abroad until his twenty-second year, when he wrote Vathek, a work of startling beauty. At twenty-four he married; but the lady died in three years. He passed many years in travelling, principally Mr. Beckford was unquestionably a man of genius and rare accomplishments. “But his abilities were overpowered, and his character tainted, by the possession of wealth so enormous. At every stage of life his money was like a millstone round his neck. He had taste and knowledge; but the selfishness of wealth tempted him to let these gifts of the mind run to seed in the gratification of extravagant freaks. He really enjoyed travelling and scenery, but he felt it incumbent on him, as a millionnaire, to take a French cook with him wherever he went; and he found that the Spanish grandees and ecclesiastical dignitaries who welcomed him so cordially valued him as the man whose cook The vanity of wealth is exemplified in the following anecdote, which Mrs. Richard Trench had from an ear-witness: The late Duke of Queensberry, leaning over the balcony of his beautiful villa near Richmond, where every pleasure was collected which wealth could purchase or luxury devise, he followed with his eyes the majestic Thames, winding through groves and buildings of various loveliness, and exclaimed, “Oh, that wearisome river! Will it never cease running, running, and I so tired of it?” To me this anecdote conveys a strong moral lesson, connected with the well-known character of the speaker, a professed voluptuary, who passed his youth in pursuit of selfish pleasures, and his age in vain attempts to elude the relentless grasp of ennui. Now let us turn to some better uses of wealth earned by well-directed industry. Old Mr. Strahan, the printer (the founder of the typarchical dynasty), said to Dr. Johnson, that “there are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than getting money;” and he added, that “the more one thinks of this, the juster it will appear.” Johnson agreed with him. Boswell also relates that Mr. Strahan once talked of launching into the great ocean of London, in order to have a chance of rising into eminence; and observing that many men were kept back from trying their fortunes there because they had been born to a competency, said, “Small certainties are the bane of men of talents;” which Johnson confirmed. Mr. Strahan had taken a poor boy from the country as “Well, my boy, how do you go on?” “Pretty well, sir; but they’re afraid I a’n’t strong enough for some parts of the business.” Johnson. “Why, I shall be sorry for it; for, when you consider with how little mental power and corporeal labour a printer can get a guinea a week, it is a very desirable occupation for you. Do you hear; take all the pains you can; and if this does not do, we must think of some other way of life for you. There’s a guinea.” Here was one of the many instances of Johnson’s active benevolence. At the same time, says Boswell, the slow and sonorous solemnity with which, while he bent himself down, he addressed a little thick short-legged boy, contrasted with the boy’s awkwardness and awe, could not but excite some ludicrous emotions. Johnson appears to have been generally alive to the policy of getting money: we all remember when, as one of the executors of Mr. Thrale, he was assisting in taking stock of the brewery in Southwark, how its vastness impressed the doctor with “the potentiality of growing rich.” William Strahan, a native of Edinburgh, came to London when a very young man, and worked as a journeyman printer, having Dr. Franklin for one of his fellow-workmen. Strahan, industrious and thrifty, prospered, and purchased, in 1770, a share of the patent for King’s printer; and he obtained considerable property in the copyrights of the works of the most celebrated authors of the time. He was a great friend to Johnson, and kept up his intimacy with Franklin. He died rich, bequeathing munificent legacies. He was succeeded in his business by his third son, Andrew Strahan, who inherited his father’s excellent qualities, and died in 1831, aged eighty-three, leaving property to the amount of more than a million of money. Among his many generous acts, he presented to James Smith, one of the authors of the Rejected Addresses, the munificent gift of 1000l. Mr. Rumsey Forster, in his piquant historical notice of Stowe, prefixed to the Priced and Annotated Catalogue, relates that, Louis Philippe being present when the Royal Family of France were enjoying the hospitality of the Marquis of Buckingham at Stowe, as they were seated together in the library, the conversation turned on events then enacting on the other side of the Channel; upon which Louis Philippe, recollecting his own position with the Revolutionists, threw himself upon his knees, and begged pardon of his royal uncle for having ever worn the tricoloured cockade. The anecdote is curious, when the subsequent career of the ex-monarch is borne in mind. The Duke died Jan. 17, 1839, and was succeeded by his “Day and Martin’s Blacking,” one of the inventions of the present century, realised a large fortune, which was mostly appropriated to beneficent purposes. Day is related to have been originally a hair-dresser; and, as the story goes, one morning a soldier entered his shop, representing that he had a long march before him to reach his regiment; that his money was gone, and nothing but sickness, fatigue, and punishment awaited him unless he could get a lift on a coach. The worthy barber, who, with his small means, was a generous man, presented him with a guinea, when the grateful soldier exclaimed, “God bless you, sir! how can I ever repay you this? I have nothing in this world except” (pulling a dirty piece of paper from his pocket) “a receipt for blacking: it is the best ever was seen; many a half-guinea have I had for it from the officers, and many bottles have I sold.” Mr. Day, who was a shrewd man, inquired into the truth of the story, tried the blacking, and finding it good, Pianoforte-making has led to great money-making results. About the year 1776, Becker, a German, undertook to apply the pianoforte mechanism to the harpsichord, assisted by John Broadwood and Robert Stodart, then workmen in the employ of Burckhardt Tschudi, of Great Pulteney-street, London. After many experiments, the grand-pianoforte mechanism was contrived by these three. Messrs. Broadwood, from 1824 to 1850, made on an average 2236 pianofortes per annum; and employed in their manufactory 573 workmen, besides persons working for them at home. In 1862 died the head of the firm, Mr. Thomas Broadwood, sen., at the age of seventy-five, leaving 350,000l. personal property, besides realty. James Morison, who styled himself “the Hygeist,” and was noted for his “Vegetable Medicines,” was a Scotchman, and a gentleman by birth and education. His family was of the landed gentry of Aberdeenshire, his brother being “Morison of Bognie,” an estate worth about 4000l. a year. In 1816 James Morison, having sold his commission, for he was an officer in the army, lived in No. 17 Silver-street, Aberdeen, a house belonging to Mr. Reid, of Souter and Reid, druggists. He obtained the use of their pill-machine, with which he made in their back-shop as many pills as filled two large casks. The ingredients of these pills, however he may have modified them afterwards, were chiefly oatmeal and bitter aloes. With these two great “meal bowies” filled with pills, he started for London; with the fag-end of his fortune advertised them far and wide, and ultimately amassed 500,000l. Such is the statement of a Correspondent of the AthenÆum. Morison’s own story was, that his own sufferings from ill-health, and the cure he at length effected upon himself by “vegetable pills,” made him a disseminator of the latter article. He had found the pills to be “the only rational purifiers of the blood;” of these he took two or three at bedtime, and a glass of lemonade in the morning, The Denisons, father and son, accumulated two of the largest fortunes of our time. About 120 years ago, Joseph Denison, who was the son of a woollen-cloth merchant at Leeds, anxious to seek his fortune in London, travelled thither in a wagon, being attended on his departure by his friends, who took a solemn leave of him, as the distance was then thought so great that they might never see him again. He at first accepted a subordinate situation; but being industrious, parsimonious, and fortunate, he speedily advanced himself in the confidence and esteem of his employers, bankers in St. Mary Axe, and married successively two wives with property. He continued to prosper; and by joining the Heywoods, eminent bankers of Liverpool, his wealth rapidly increased. In 1787 he purchased the estate of Denbies, near Dorking in Surrey. By his second wife he had one son, William Joseph Denison; and two daughters—Elizabeth, married, in 1794, to Henry, first Marquis Conyngham; and Maria, married, in 1793, to Sir Robert Lawley, Bart., created, in 1831, Baron Wenlock. Mr. Denison died in 1806; his son, succeeding to the banking business, continued to accumulate; and, at his death in his seventy-ninth year, in August 1849, left two millions and a half of money. He had sat in Parliament for Surrey from 1818. He was a man of cultivated tastes, possessed a knowledge of art and elegant literature; he feared to be thought ostentatious, and could with difficulty be prevailed on to have a lodge erected at the entrance to a new road which he had just formed on his estate, near Dorking. The Marchioness Conyngham was left a widow in 1832; she died in 1861, having attained the venerable age of ninety-two, and lived to see both her sons peers of the realm,—the one in succession to his father; the second, Albert Denison, as heir to her own brother’s great fortune and estates, with the title of Baron Londesborough. The career of George Hudson, ridiculously styled “the Railway King,” was one of the ignes fatui of the railway The most beneficial fortunes made in business are those by which, at the same time, permanent advantages are secured to the public. Henry Colburn, the well-known publisher, “was a man of much ability and extraordinary enterprise. His public career connected him intimately with the literature of the present century, and few are the distinguished writers, during the last forty years, whose names were not associated with that of Mr. Colburn. In one of Mr. Disraeli’s novels a handsome tribute is paid to his acuteness of judgment and generosity of dealing. The publication of the Diaries of Pepys and Evelyn will rank among many sterling contributions to literature due in the first instance to his enterprise. He originated those weekly literary reviews which have since been so successful; he established more than one newspaper, and conducted for a great many years the Magazine which still bears his name; and was the original publisher of Sir Bernard Burke’s Peerage. In private life he was known as a friendly, hospitable, kind Mr. James Morrison, the wealthy warehouseman of Cripplegate, started in life as foreman to Mr. Todd, whose daughter he married; and succeeding to his large property, distinguished himself as a sound political economist, and for some years sat in Parliament. He obtained, by purchase, the fine estates of Basilden, in Berkshire, and Fonthill, in Wiltshire: at Basilden, in 1846, the Lord Mayor and Corporation, upon the View of the Thames, were entertained by Mr. Morrison, who then referred with much gratification to his having been brought up in the City of London, “connected with it in a mercantile point of view, and having, by his own industry, obtained every thing he could desire.” He was a man of high commercial character; to which Mr. Edwin Chadwick, at the Meeting of the British Association at Cambridge, in 1862, bore this interesting testimony: “I had the pleasure,” said Mr. Chadwick, “of the acquaintance of perhaps the most wealthy and successful merchant of the last half-century,—a distinguished member of our political economy club, the late Mr. James Morrison,—who assured me, that the leading principles to which he owed his success in life, and which he vindicated as sound elements of economical science, were—always to consult the interests of the consumer, and not, as is the common maxim, to buy cheap and sell dear, but to sell cheap as well as to buy cheap; it being to his interest to widen the area of consumption, and to sell quickly and to the many. The next maxim is involved in the first principle—always to tell the truth, to have no shams: a rule which he confessed he found it most difficult to get his common sellers to adhere to in its integrity, yet most important for success, it being to his interest as a merchant that any ship-captain might come into his warehouse and fill his ship with goods of which he had no technical knowledge, but of which he well knew that only a small profit was charged upon a close ready-money purchasing price, and that go where he would he would find nothing cheaper; it being, moreover, to the merchant’s interest that his bill of prices should be every where received from experience as a truth, and trustworthy evidence so far With this brilliant exception before us, we must, however, admit the general truth of this experience: “The nobility of trade usually ends with the second generation. A thrifty and persevering man falls into a line of business by which he accumulates a large fortune, preserving through life the habits, manners, and connexions of his trade; but his children, brought up with expectations of enjoying his property, understand only the art of spending. Hence, when deprived of fortune, without industry or resources, they die in beggary, leaving a third generation to the same chances of life as those with which their grandfather began his career fourscore years before.” 103. Spectator newspaper, 1862. 104. Saturday Review. 105. When the Duke and Duchess, in taking farewell of Stowe, had reached the flower-garden, they both burst into a violent fit of tears. They went through the two gardens, and left them in silent sorrow: as he passed along, the Duke gave the Duchess a rose, which she treasured as the last gift. 106. See Ulster’s Vicissitudes of Families, in three volumes, for many impressive narratives of the same class as the above. 107. The Examiner. 108. Golden Rules of Social Philosophy, by Sir Richard Phillips. CIVIC WORTHIES.The state and dignity of the office of Chief Magistrate of the City of London have, during nearly centuries of its existence, pointed many a moral,—from the nursery-tale of Whittington to the accessories of Hogarth’s pictures and a homelier illustration of our own days: Our Lord Mayor and his golden coach, and his gold-covered footmen and coachman, and his golden chain, and his chaplain, and great sword of state, please the people, and particularly the women and girls; and when they are pleased, the men and boys are pleased: and many a young fellow has been more industrious and attentive from his hope of one day riding in that golden coach.—Cobbett. This is, however, but the bright side of the picture. Civic office is often a costly honour; not only by large expenditure, but by neglect of private business to attend to the public duties of the station. All that we propose to do here is to record a few noteworthy Mayoralties of the present century, to show that the office continues to be filled by men of high character and moral worth. Among the worthy citizens should be mentioned Sir Sir Matthew Wood, Bart., the most popular Lord Mayor in the present century, began life as a druggist’s traveller, and then settled in London in the ward of Cripplegate, for which he rose to be alderman: he served as Lord Mayor two successive years, and represented the City in nine parliaments; his baronetcy was the first title conferred by Queen Victoria shortly after her accession. He gained much popularity as the adviser of the ill-fated Queen Caroline; for which, and his general political conduct, a princely legacy was bequeathed to him by the wealthy banker of Gloucester of the same name. He died in his 75th year: his eldest son, the present baronet, is in holy orders; and his second son, Sir William Page Wood, is a sound equity lawyer and a Vice-Chancellor. Alderman Birch, Lord Mayor in 1815, received a liberal education, and at an early age wrote some poems of considerable merit: he succeeded his father in business, as a cook and confectioner, in Cornhill. He produced several dramatic pieces, of which the Adopted Child is a stock favourite: he was a sound scholar, and wrote the inscription for the statue of George III. in the Council-chamber at the Guildhall, and took an active part in founding the London Institution. Waithman made his first political speech at Founders’ Hall, “the caldron of sedition,” when he and his fellow-orators were routed by constables sent by the Lord Mayor, Sanderson, to disperse the meeting. When Sheriff, in 1821, Waithman, in endeavouring to quell a tumult at Knightsbridge, had a carbine presented at him by a lifeguardsman; and, at the funeral of Queen Caroline, a bullet passed through the Sheriff’s carriage, in the procession through Hyde-park. Latterly, the alderman grew too moderate for his Farringdon-ward friends, and he was defeated of being elected Chamberlain; he then withdrew to a farm near Reigate, and in this bucolic retirement passed away. He was an intrepid, upright man, but had been sparsely educated; and many of the Resolutions on the War with France, by which he gained political notoriety, were written by his friend and neighbour, Sir Richard Phillips. In early life Waithman showed considerable genius for acting; and we once heard him relate that his success in the character of Macbeth led his friends to press upon him Alderman Kelly, Lord Mayor at the accession of her Majesty in 1837, was horn at Chevening, in Kent, and lived, when a youth, with Alexander Hogg, the publisher, in Paternoster-row, for 10l. a year wages. He slept under the shop-counter for the security of the premises; but was reported to his master to be “too slow” for the situation: Mr. Hogg, however, thought him “a biddable boy,” and he remained: this incident shows upon what apparently trifling circumstances a man’s future prospects in life depend. Kelly succeeded Mr. Hogg in the business, became alderman of the ward, and lived upon the spot sixty years: he died in his eighty-fourth year. Sir Chapman Marshall, Lord Mayor 1839-40, was also of humble origin, as he narrated in 1831, when Sheriff, in replying to the toast of his health: “My Lord Mayor and gentlemen, you now see before you a humble individual who has been educated in a parochial school. I came to London in 1803, without a shilling—without a friend. I have not had the advantage of a classical education; therefore you will excuse my defects of language. But this I will say, my Lord Mayor and gentlemen, that you witness in me what may be done by the earnest application of honest industry; and I trust my example may induce others to aspire, by the same means, to the distinguished situation which I now have the honour to fill.” Here is a similar instance. Sir John Pirie, Lord Mayor 1841-2, received his baronetcy on the christening of the Prince of Wales: at his inauguration dinner Sir John said: “I little thought, forty years ago, when I came to the City of London, a poor lad from the banks of the Tweed, that I should ever arrive at so great a distinction.” Alderman Wire, Lord Mayor 1858-9, was born 1801, and was one of the large family of a tradesman at Colchester; yet he had the advantage of a liberal education. He came to London and articled himself to a City solicitor, and by his intelligence and industry was advanced to be partner in the business, and ultimately became the head of the firm. He Alderman Mechi deserves a niche among these civic worthies, by the superior enterprise of his career. He is the son of a citizen of Bologna, was brought to England by his father, and, obtaining a clerkship in a house in the Newfoundland trade, he remained there eleven years. Whilst in this service, he turned the hour allowed for dinner to profitable account by selling, among his friends and acquaintance in the City, a small and inexpensive article, of which he had bought the patent. Mainly by these exertions, when in his twenty-fifth year, he commenced business as a cutler, with the success we have already intimated. He then studied how to remedy the defects of English farming by scientific processes; rose to be Sheriff and an Alderman; took an active part in the affairs of the Society of Arts, and was specially sent by her Majesty’s Government to the Industrial Exhibition at Paris in 1854. Addison, we know, says, “the City has always been the province for satire; and the wits of King Charles’s time jested upon nothing else during his whole reign.” Nevertheless, “the Merry Monarch” dined with the citizens no fewer than nine times in their Guildhall. Here also Whittington had feasted Henry V. and his Queen, when he threw the King’s bonds for 60,000l. into a fire of spice-wood. But a still more memorable feast was that in 1497, when at the table of the Lord Mayor, William Purchase, Erasmus first met Sir Thomas More; whence sprung one of the most interesting friendships in literary history. It has been well said that a dinner lubricates business; and it does more—it fosters charity and good works. The annual banquet on Lord-Mayor’s-day, in the Guildhall, is mostly to be viewed as a festival of civic state: “the loving-cup and the barons of beef carrying the mind back to medieval times and manners.” 109. Birch excelled in his art; and his cuisine was unrivalled in the City. Kitchiner immortalised his soups in print, and the Mansion-House banquets and Court dinners of the Companies attested the alderman’s practical skill in his business. The shop in Cornhill was established in the reign of King George I. by Horton, who was succeeded by the father of Alderman Birch, whose successors, in 1836, were the present proprietors, Ring and Brymer. The premises present a curious specimen of the decorated shop-front of the early part of the last century. 110. See Life of Alderman Kelly, by the Rev. R. C. Fell. 1856. 111. Cunningham. WORKING AUTHORS AND ARTISTS.Godwin, the novelist and political writer, used to say that an author should have two heads,—one for his books, the other for worldly matters. And Holcroft, Godwin’s contemporary, made a similar remark on actors,—that they were so often filling other characters as to forget their own. These observations are, happily, of rare application in the cases of the present day. We, however, remember the phrase of Grub-street in occasional use, and we find “the poor devil of an author” in one of Washington Irving’s early works. But this species is now extinct; and authors build villas, give large parties, and keep carriages, like other successful professional men. Nor must it be forgotten that they do not receive their money for corrupt services, as did the hacks of former days; and a Grub-street Author would be now almost as great a rarity as a living gorilla. We remember a specimen of “author and rags—author and dirt—author and gin,”—of forty years since. He lived in a garret, Another humble practitioner of authorship had been driven to it by failure in business; and an undecided Chancery-suit had made him a pitiable, puling fellow; far less cheerful than the evergreen “Tom Hill,” who, failing as a drysalter at unlettered Queenhithe, betook himself to the editorship of the Monthly Mirror, but had to part with a collection of book-rarities (chiefly English poetry), which he began to make in early life as some relief to drysalting, which was any thing but Attic work! The life of this “merry bachelor” exemplified one venerable proverb, and disproved another: born in 1760, and dying in 1840, he was “as old as the Hills,” having led a long life and a merry one. He was a remarkably early riser; but that which contributed more to his longevity was his gaiety of heart, and his being merry and wise: he had his cares and crosses, but when nearly ruined by an adverse speculation in indigo, he retired with the remains of his property to chambers in the Adelphi. His books were valued at 6000l. He had been a MecÆnas in his time, and had patronised two friendless poets, Bloomfield and Kirke White. He was the Hull of his friend Theodore Hook’s Gilbert Gurney, and suggested some of the eccentricities of Paul Pry. Authorship and Trade are thought to be “wide as the poles asunder,” though sometimes attempered by circumstances. David Booth, who wrote the Analytical Dictionary and a critical work on English Composition, was originally a brewer, then a man of letters; and late in life he realised much money by imparting to brewers the secret of preventing Acidification in Brewing. Among the strange successes of authorship may be mentioned the popularity of works published anonymously, which their authors have not cared to claim. The accomplished Literary Fame, Lord Byron affected to despise, in the following entry in his entertaining Ravenna Journal, January 4th, 1821: I was out of spirits—read the papers—thought what fame was, on reading in a case of murder that Mr. Wych, grocer, at Tunbridge, sold some bacon, flour, cheese, and, it is believed, some plums, to some gipsy woman accused. He had on his counter (I quote faithfully) a book, the Life of Pamela, which he was tearing for waste paper, &c. &c. In the cheese was found, &c., and a leaf of Pamela wrapped round the bacon. What would Richardson, the vainest and luckiest of living authors (i. e. while alive)—he who, with Aaron Hill, used to prophesy and chuckle over the presumed fall of Fielding (the prose Homer of human nature), and of Pope (the most beautiful of poets)—what would he have said could he have traced his pages from their place on the French prince’s toilets (see Boswell’s Johnson) to the grocer’s counter and the gipsy murderess’s bacon? What would he have said—what can any body say—save what Solomon said long before us. After all, it is but passing from one counter to another—from the bookseller’s to the other tradesman’s, grocer or pastry-cook. For my part, I have met with most poetry upon trunks; so that I am apt to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship. The Letters of Southey afford some of the most truthful experiences of an author to be found in any record of human life and character. At the age of thirty, when struggling with the world, he wrote thus reverentially: No man was ever more contented with his lot than I am; for few have ever had more enjoyments, and none had ever better or worthier hopes. Life, therefore, is sufficiently dear to me, and long life desirable, that I may accomplish all which I design. But yet, I could be well content that the next century were over, and my part fairly at an end, having been gone well through. Just as at school one wished the school-days over, though we were happy enough there, because we expected more happiness and more liberty when we were to be our own masters, might lie as much later in the morning as we pleased, have no bounds, and do no exercise,—just so do I wish that my exercises were over, that that ugly chrysalis state were passed through to which we must all come, and that I had fairly burst my shell, and got into the new world, with wings upon my shoulders, or some inherent power like the wishing-cap, which should annihilate all the inconveniences of space. How lifelike also is the following passage upon Southey’s meeting his friend and schoolfellow, Combe! “It is about six years since I saw him. Both he and I have grown into men with as little change as possible in either; and yet, The life of John Britton, the topographer and antiquary, presents a remarkable instance of a man born to trouble, yet so successfully struggling with difficulties of all kinds, as to attain a respectable position in life, and to be honoured in his declining years with a public testimonial of esteem. He was born at Kington, Wilts, in 1771: his father, through failure in trade, became insane; the boy learnt his letters from a hornbook, but received little further schooling. He came to London, and, until manhood, worked hard in wine-cellars; but his health breaking down in this employment, he engaged himself at fifteen shillings a week as clerk to an attorney. He had grown fond of reading, but could only get snatches at book-stalls from books, having no money to buy them. However, he at length succeeded in getting a few, read early and late, and made some attempts at authorship, which led him to an enterprise that may be said to have indicated his future fortune. He projected publishing a description of his native county, Wiltshire, and with this view waited upon the Marquis of Lansdowne, at Bowood, to solicit his patronage. The career of Mr. Britton’s friend and neighbour, Francis Baily, the astronomer, presents a memorable instance of a well-spent life, although commenced with a mistake. He was apprenticed to a London tradesman; but disliking the business, at the expiration of the term, his taste The rise of Chantrey, the sculptor, from peasant-life was nobly earned. He was born in the village of Norton, Derbyshire, in 1781, of parents in humble circumstances. When a boy carrying milk to the next town, he would stop to form grotesque figures of the yellow clay; and he moulded his mother’s butter on churning-days into various forms. From his fondness for drawing and modelling he was apprenticed to a carver and gilder at Sheffield. Thence he came to London, and began to work at carving in stone, not having received a single lesson from any sculptor; and he laboured for eight years without earning 5l. in his profession. At length, a single bust brought him 12,000l.-worth of commissions, and he rose to be the first sculptor of his day. He died in 1841, and was buried in a tomb which he had built for himself in It is scarcely possible to name Chantrey without being reminded of his friend, “honest Allan Cunningham,” who, born in the county of Dumfries, in 1784, received but scanty education, and at the age of eleven was apprenticed to a mason. In the intervals of his laborious occupation, “he sought knowledge wherever he could obtain it,” and drew his earliest poetic inspiration from the dear country of Burns—the wilds of Nithsdale, and the lone banks of the Solway. Here he earned his daily bread as a common stonemason until his twenty-sixth year, when he came to London, wavering between labour and literature. He chose the latter, in reporting for the newspapers; but, soon tired of its perplexities, he resumed his first calling, and by a fortunate opportunity, to which his own excellent character recommended him, he became foreman of the works of Chantrey, in which honourable employment he remained until the sculptor’s death, in 1841. In his intervals of business, by untiring industry, Allan Cunningham produced a succession of works noteworthy in the poetry and general literature of his day. His first poetry was printed in 1807: he also wrote stirring romances; and in collecting Tradition Tales of the Scottish Peasantry, by the light of an evening fire, he sweetened many an hour of remission from daily labour. Later in life he became a critic of the Fine Arts, and wrote with amiable feeling, honesty, and candour, and mature and liberal taste: it was well observed of him in his lifetime: “He needs no testimony either to his intellectual accomplishments or his moral worth; nor, thanks to his own virtuous diligence, does he need any patronage.” His genius and artistic judgment have been inherited by his third son, Peter Cunningham, the well-known critic, topographer, and antiquary. With far less classical learning, fewer images derived from travelling, inferior information on many historical subjects, and a mind of a less impassioned and energetic cast than other writers of his time, Sir Walter is far more deeply read in that book which is ever the same—the human heart. This is his unequalled excellence: there he stands, without a rival since the days of Shakspeare. It is to this cause that his astonishing success has been owing. We feel in his characters that it is not romance, but real life, which is represented. Every word that is said, especially in the Scotch novels, is nature itself. Homer, Cervantes, Shakspeare, and Scott, alone have penetrated to the deep substratum of character, which, however disguised by the varieties of climate and government, is at bottom every where the same; and thence they have found a responsive echo in every human heart. Every man who reads these admirable works, from the North Cape to Cape Horn, feels that what the characters they contain are made to say, is just what would have occurred to themselves, or what they have heard said by others as long as they lived. Nor is it only in the delineation of character, and the knowledge of human nature, that the Scottish novelist, like his great predecessors, is but for them without a rival. Powerful in the pathetic, admirable in dialogue, unmatched in description, his writings captivate the mind as much by the varied excellences which they exhibit, as by the powerful interest which they maintain. He has carried romance out of the region of imagination and sensibility into the walks of actual life. Isaac Disraeli, who died in 1848, at the age of eighty-two, was “a complete literary character, a man who really passed his life in his library. Even marriage produced no change in these habits: he rose to enter the chamber where he lived alone with his books, and at night his lamp was ever lit within the same walls.” His father destined him for business; but this he opposed so strongly as to compose a long poem against commerce, which he attempted to get published. In spite of all his father could say or do, young Disraeli determined to become a literary man. His first He was fair, with a Bourbon nose, and brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a small black-velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities were delicate and well formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly he had become corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was garrulous. Every thing interested him; and blind, and eighty-two, he was still as susceptible as a child. One of his last acts was to compose some verses of gay gratitude to his daughter-in-law, who was his London correspondent, and to whose lively pen his last years were indebted for constant amusement. He had by nature a singular volatility, which never deserted him. His feelings, though always amiable, were not painfully deep, and amid joy or sorrow the philosophic vein was ever evident. He more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare him to: in his conversation his apparent confusion of ideas ending with some felicitous phrase of genius, his naÏvetÉ, his simplicity not untouched with a dash of sarcasm affecting innocence—one was often reminded of the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson. There was, however, one trait in which my father did not resemble Goldsmith: he had no vanity. Indeed, one of his few infirmities was rather a deficiency of self-esteem. Mr. Disraeli had the pride and happiness to see the writer of the above, Benjamin Disraeli, not only achieve high distinction in literature, but become a minister of the Crown. We remember him in his twenty-fifth year. “Who is that gentleman with a profusion of hair, whom I so often see here?” was our inquiry of a publisher in Oxford-street. “That is young Disraeli,” was the publisher’s reply; “and he would be glad to execute any literary work for a guinea or two.” He had already produced a piece of piquant satire, an Account of the Great World, Lord Macaulay, the brilliant essayist, historian, and orator, exemplifies in his successful career how genius may be most profitably nurtured by systematic education. Of quick perception and great power of memory, when a boy he would tell long stories from the Arabian Nights and Scott’s novels; but the familiar books of his home were the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, and a few Cameronian divines; and he was fond of Scripture phraseology throughout his writings. He appears to have been a great favourite of Hannah More, who thought him a little prodigy of acquisition, and wrote of him, when on a visit to her in his boyhood: The quantity of reading that Tom has poured in, and the quantity of writing he has poured out, is astonishing. We have poetry for breakfast, dinner, and supper. He recited all Palestine (Bishop Heber’s poem), while we breakfasted, to our pious friend, Mr. Whalley, at my desire, and did it incomparably.... I sometimes fancy I observe a daily progress in the growth of his mental powers. His fine promise of mind, too, expands more and more; and, what is extraordinary, he has as much accuracy in his expression as spirit and vivacity in his imagination. I like, too, that he takes a lively interest in all passing events, and that the child is still preserved; I like to see him as boyish as he is studious, and that he is as much amused with making a pat of butter as a poem. Though loquacious, he is very docile; and I don’t remember a single instance in which he has persisted in doing any thing when he saw we did not approve it. Several men of sense and learning have been struck with the union of gaiety and rationality in his conversation. More remarkable was the prevoyance of Macaulay’s power as a writer, which Hannah More almost literally predicted: he cherished a warm recollection of his obligations to her, and the influence she had in directing his reading. He received his peerage in honour of his valuable services to literature: he will long be remembered by his grasp of mind, descriptive picturesqueness, strong feeling and vivid It may take the reader by surprise to be told that, astounding as the career of Lord Brougham has been, the rise of this distinguished man to the highest honour of the realm appears to have been predicted thirty years before its attainment. At the Social Science dinner at the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, on June 14th, 1862, at which Lord Brougham presided, Mr. J. W. Napier, Ex-Chancellor of Ireland, related that he remembered, some years previously, meeting an old and respected lady in the north of England, who was present at a party when the first writers in the Edinburgh Review, including Henry Brougham, dined together at Edinburgh, after the publication of the Second Number of the Review (in 1802). On that occasion, the lady’s husband, Mr. Fletcher, remarked that the writer of a certain paper in the Review, of which he knew not the author, was fit to be any thing. Mr. Brougham hearing this, observed, “What! do you think he is fit to be Lord Chancellor?” The reply was, “Yes; and I tell you more: he will be Lord Chancellor;” and the old lady had the happiness to live thirty years after this, and to see her friend Lord Chancellor of England. Lord Brougham well remembered old Mrs. Fletcher, and corroborated the accuracy of Mr. Napier’s anecdote. Mr. Napier then proposed, in an affectionate manner, the health of Lord Brougham, whose answer was, as he said, but a repetition of words he had spoken thirty years ago elsewhere. But on the present occasion they were perhaps even more appropriate, and in themselves singularly beautiful: “When I cease from my labours, the cause of freedom, peace, and progress will lose a friend, and no man living will lose an enemy.” The noble lord was much affected, and it is needless to tell of the applause which followed the sentiment. Henry Brougham was born in Edinburgh in 1779: his father was no extraordinary man, but his mother is described as a woman of talent and delightful character. The son was educated in Edinburgh, which, in 1857, he declared in public he looked upon as a very great benefit conferred on him by Providence. He was dux of the Rector’s class at the Edinburgh University in 1791; and he was preËminent Mr. Brougham writes almost as well as he speaks. In the midst of an election contest he comes out to address the populace, and goes back to his study to finish an article for the Edinburgh Review, sometimes indeed wedging three or four articles in the shape of rifacimenti of his own pamphlets or speeches in Parliament in a single Number. Such indeed is the activity of his mind, that it appears to require neither repose nor any other stimulus than a delight in its own exercise. He can turn his hand to any thing, but he cannot be idle. He is, in fact, a striking instance of the versatility and strength of the human mind, and also, in one sense, of the length of human life: if we make good use of our time, there is room enough to crowd almost every art and science into it. It is now nearly forty years since this was written, and it is almost as applicable as ever. In 1828, in a debate in Parliament, Mr. Brougham used the memorable words, “The schoolmaster is abroad.” He next, in a speech of six hours’ delivery, moved for an inquiry into the state of the Law; the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Catholic Emancipation, and the Charities Commission, were next advocated by him; and then, Parliamentary Reform, the Abolition of Punishment of Forgery by Death, Local Courts, and the Abolition of Slavery. In 1830 he was raised to the high office of Lord Chancellor. Mechanics’ Institutes, and the foundation of University College, and the Diffusion of The universal energy which has marked Lord Brougham was thus ably summed up, on the publication of his volume of scientific Tracts, in 1860: If the fact of his scientific researches were less well known, there would be something quite startling in the announcement of a volume of mathematical tracts from the hand of a man who has had half a score of other occupations, each sufficient to engross the whole mind of an ordinarily constituted mortal. To be great as a circuit leader, all-powerful as a popular chief, triumphant as a reforming Chancellor—to be the prominent figure in the Anti-Slavery movement, the promoter of education, the concocter of law-reforming statutes almost without number—the statesman of all parties, the citizen of two countries, and the orator of a thousand platforms—might have sufficed most ambitions, without the renown of literary success and scientific effort. But, not content with the public achievements of his life, or the obscure glory of anonymous literature, Lord Brougham has striven to reproduce in an English dress the eloquence of Demosthenes, and to correct the real or supposed errors of no less a philosopher than Newton himself.... Philosophical theories may survive Lord Brougham’s attacks, and savans may forget his speculations; but generations of Englishmen will long remember the career of a man who has exhibited in a thousand forms an amount of mental vitality which it would be difficult to parallel in the history of the most restless and eager aspirants to the glory of universal genius. It is impossible to reflect upon the politico-legal position of Lord Brougham when he sat upon the woolsack, without remembering that Brougham and Denman, at the trial of Queen Caroline, attacked with virulence, then generally condemned, the Prince from whose hands, as sovereign, ten years later, both received high legal office. This change in feeling is alike creditable to all. One of the most remarkable men of our day was Professor Wilson, the Editor of Blackwood’s Magazine, in the pages of which he is thus characterised, from his bust in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham: he was born at Paisley, in Scotland, in 1785; and died at Edinburgh, in 1854. The head tells the story of the whole man. It is the head of an athlete, but an athlete possessing a soul, the grace of Apollo sitting on the thews of Hercules. Such a man, you would say at once, was none of your sedentary litterati, who appear to have the cramp in their limbs whenever they move abroad, but one who could, like the Greeks of old, ride, run, wrestle, box, dive, or throw the discus at need, or put the stone like Ulysses himself, or one who could do the same things, 112. Such a room as Mr. Egg has painted in his masterly picture of “The Death of Chatterton;” and, curiously enough, the house above referred to was nearly upon the same spot. 113. This was William, first Marquis of Lansdowne, who, as Earl of Shelburne, was Prime Minister in 1782; the date of Mr. Britton’s visit was 1798. By the Marquis’s kindness, he tells us that he left Bowood for Chippenham loaded with books, and a copy of a large Survey of Wiltshire, in eighteen folio sheets. The Marquis was a liberal patron of Art, and commenced at Bowood and Shelburne House the formation of a gallery of modern art; and his fine taste was amply inherited by his son Henry, the third Marquis, who died at Bowood in January 1863. 114. We remember a similarly gratifying incident in early life. We had scarcely reached twenty-one, when we had occasion to wait upon Mr. Chamberlain Clark, to request of him some particulars of the house of Cowley the poet, at Chertsey, which was then in Mr. Clark’s tenancy. The bland old Chamberlain inquired if we had ever written a book; to which the reply was, that we had a volume of topography in the press. “Then please to put down my name for a copy,” kindly rejoined the Chamberlain, although the work was merely of local interest. What kindness in one who was the chastener of refractory apprentices and the terror of evil-doers! 115. Mr. P. Cunningham, in the Builder, Feb. 14, 1863, writes as follows: “Chantrey died so suddenly that an inquest was held upon his body. I was present. It was a solemn sight, not to be effaced whilst unimpaired remembrance reigns. In an exquisite little gallery built for him by Sir John Soane, lay (seen by many lighted tapers) the breathless body and torpid hand that had given life to helpless clay and shapeless stone. Around the body in its windingsheet were ranged some of the finest casts from the antique that money and taste could procure. Calm and solemn was the scene. My father kissed the cold forehead of his friend with these words: “My dear master.” I looked into his eyes as we left together; they were full of tears.”—New Materials for the Life of Chantrey. 116. Sir Archibald Alison. 117. Published by Ridgway, Piccadilly, 1829. WEAR AND TEAR OF PUBLIC LIFE.The sudden death of Lord George Bentinck, the political leader, in 1848, in his forty-seventh year, showed how the most ardent intellect and the noblest frame are alike broken down by the turmoil of public life. After a late debate in Parliament he would travel by rail many miles to hunt, and return in time to attend the sittings of the House in the evening; throwing a wrapper over his scarlet hunting-coat, and exercising indefatigably the office of “whipper-in” in the House, and subsequently leader of “the country party.” He had during these political avocations continued his attention to racing and race-horses, declaring on one occasion that the winning of the Derby was the “blue-ribbon” of the turf. In August 1848 he retired to Welbeck Abbey for relaxation; he, however, attended Doncaster races four times in one week, at which a horse of his own breeding won the St. Leger stakes, to his great gratification. On September 21st he left Welbeck on foot, soon after four o’clock in the afternoon, to visit Earl Manvers, at Thoresby-park, and sent his servants to meet him with a carriage at an appointed place. He appeared not; the servants became alarmed; search was made for him; but it was not till eleven at night that he was found quite dead, lying on a footpath in a meadow about a mile from the house: his death having been caused by spasms of the heart. In Cavendish-square has been set up a colossal statue of this remarkable man: the pedestal simply bears his name; his political and sporting celebrity has “waned with time; had the awful circumstances of his death been inscribed upon the memorial, it would have been a constant monition—a “siste viator”—of far greater value than a political monument. |
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